Emily in Paris season 5 review: A much needed guilty pleasure for the holiday season!

Emily made me binge-watch her questionable decisions and I couldn’t stop watching…yet again!

Emily in Paris season 5 review: Every year Emily comes into our lives and takes us through her crazy, unrealistic world in Paris and even though we swear we won’t give into it, we ultimately end up binging it in one go every damn time! That’s just what Emily in Paris has mastered through the years - being the perfect guilty pleasure for us. Because even though I judge every decision, every lifestyle choice and every outfit she wears, I still somehow just cannot get enough of her and her life that most of us can only dream of having! Maybe I vicariously live through her every season and wonder if this would really be me if I were stuck in Paris with hot guys from all around the world falling head over heels for me as well?

A majority of the new season is not set in titular Paris and is in fact giving us Emily in Rome. Turns out the Roman version of Emily(Lily Collins) is a lot more mature, calm, happy and in love than the Parisian Emily who always brought the drama. The new season starts off with her dating the Italian stud Marcello(Eugenio Franceschini), who she falls for in the latter half of the previous season. But she is not only dating him, she is also trying to market his elite fashion brand, House of Muratori but is having a hard time convincing his mother to let go of her conventional methods. Meanwhile, we see Mindy (Ashley Park) stirring something with Alfie(Lucien Laviscount) and that turns out to be way hotter than I expected it to! If I knew these two had insane chemistry, I would have petitioned to keep them together from the start. But no love story in this show is complete without some major ups and downs and both Emily and Mindy are tested in ways we wouldn’t have expected. Let’s just say they have some tough choices to make!

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Sylvie (Phillipine Leroy Beaulieu), on the other hand, keeps winning my heart season after season. I love that she is shown to be far from perfect but a flawed, grey yet a confident woman who knows what she wants. I hope I am half as cool as she is when I’m her age! And of course how can I forget to mention her outfits that fully stole the show this season! The plot thickens when the gang is back in Paris and Emily meets Gabriel(Lucas Bravo) yet again. But surprisingly, their equation this season was a lot less complicated and a lot more evolved. There was communication and genuine happiness for one another - that’s a first! Despite Gabriel’s limited screen time this season which is an absolute bummer, whenever he does come on-screen, you root for him with all your heart. But Gabriel and Marcello aren’t the only two guys with feelings for Emily, there’s a third eye-candy in the picture too and he seems rather smitten by her as well. Even though Emily has a bizarre love life, she still somehow has a different kind of chemistry with each one of these men and I genuinely want to ask if she can spare one for me if she’s not interested?

One thing Emily in Paris always gets right is its aesthetics. If you thought Paris made for a visual spectacle, wait till Emily takes you around Roman architecture. The best of fashion, production design, color palette and fonts put together make for a solid reason for you to be hooked to this season. This installment we also see major character developments like we never have before! Everyone from the main cast is taking big leaps of faith, taking the story further in a way that you feel the beginning of the end is near. Having said that, did Alfie and Gabriel deserve better this season? One hundred percent, yes! And the makers are clever enough to use their cliffhangers as bait for us to eagerly await the next season and as always, I know I will!

All episodes of Emily in Paris season 5 are currently streaming on Netflix!

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